ABSTRACT
During the nineteenth century and until the mid-twentieth century, Palestine underwent many political and social changes. From 1516 to 1917, the country was part of the Ottoman Empire.1 As the ‘sick man of Europe’ was weakened from a political point of view, the competition was fierce between France, Italy and Great Britain to gain some political rights over parts of the Empire. For example, from 1847 until 1923, France was holding the protectorate over the Holy Places in Palestine. This religious privilege was considered as a first step for potential political domination over the country. After its defeat following the First World War, the Empire was divided and Palestine was placed by the UN under the authority of a British mandate. This British success was felt as a failure by the French political and clerical leaders, as they had hoped to receive the UN mandate over the country. This mandate ended in 1948 when the Zionist settlers fought for their independence and the State of Israel was created. The country was left in a state of political and social unrest as the tensions between the Arabs and the Jews were culminating. From a demographic point of view, the population grew and changed sig-
nificantly during the period. Throughout the nineteenth century, most of the inhabitants were Arabs. Some Jewish population clusters could be found in Safed, Tiberias and Jerusalem. After the Crimean war, in the 1850s, the defeat and the opening of the Ottoman Empire to the European population meant that the number of pilgrims, religious congregations, businessmen, diplomats, scientists, and various travellers and settlers increased in the region. Jewish settlers established themselves in rural communities from 1850 but there were only a few thousands at that time. From the 1880s, particularly after the pogroms in Russia and the many persecutions in different European countries, a growing Jewish population arrived in Palestine. They benefited from the financial help of wealthy donors like the Rothschilds and most of them followed the Zionist ideals. They created settlements across the country and their most significant achievement was the erection of the city of Tel Aviv in 1911. Some of these changes were translated into the urban landscape of Palestine. The perception of this landscape by Western francophone travellers
throughout this period is very interesting as it changed over time and revealed what they thought about the various groups of inhabitants of the country. This chapter aims to underline the main characteristics of the travellers’ dis-
course about Arabs and Jews in Palestine and to emphasize its chronological evolution, especially through their vision of the urban space. The sources are sixty-four travellers’ accounts written between 1799, when Napoleon launched a military and cultural campaign over Egypt and Syria, a landmark in the interest of the French audience about the Middle East, and 1948, when Israel became an independent country. The choice of Palestine as a destination was determined by its geo-political importance and by the fact that it was the cradle of the three monotheistic religions and a land of pilgrimage. As hundreds of travel accounts were written in French during that period, most of them by pilgrims, we selected a sample following two criteria: the decade of the account, and the goal of the journey. As a result, we selected thirty-two accounts by pilgrims and missionaries, four by diplomats and politicians, one by a military leader, two by tradesmen, eight by scientists (archaeologists, botanists, architects, or other), five by tourists without a religious purpose, and twelve by writers or journalists. Travellers’ accounts of a given urban space can be very informative on the
degree of civilization that they attribute to the people living in that specific space. According to anthropologist J.-D. Urbain, tourists always keep in mind that “a city condenses the values of a civilisation”.2 This research focuses on the representation of Palestinian cities and their inhabitants through travelogues written in French by European travellers between 1799 and 1948. During this period, most of the Palestinian cities were inhabited by a Muslim Arab population, as in Hebron or Nablus; a few, like Bethlehem and Nazareth, were inhabited by a majority of Christian Arab population; and, finally, a few had an important Jewish community, such as Safed, Tiberias, and later Tel Aviv. The case of Jerusalem was much more complex because of its Holy City Status. It was composed of religiously and ethnically homogeneous districts and had witnessed many changes from the end of the nineteenth century, with new European-like hamlets outside its walls. With such diversity, how will the travellers describe the cities of Palestine, knowing as we do that the ways in which they consider aspect, layout and urban planning will provide clues to the way they gauge the level of civilization of the inhabitants?
